Guy Barnett, philosopher:
“There should be a ban on cloning, because cloning is cloning is cloning, and this so-called therapeutic cloning is in fact that, it is cloning.”
Hugh Niall gives a good overview of the recent review of Australia’s legislation for regulating research involving human embryos and prohibiting human cloning.
The current focus is on Recommendation 23, which argues that therapeutic cloning should be permitted for research into disease. He examines the arguments for and against therapeutic cloning, or stem cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). I agree with his analysis, and I personally support it, but I want to know why people “universally� condemn reproductive cloning.
The difference between the therapeutic and reproductive comes down to whether the embryo is used to create a stem-cell line for research purposes, or whether the embryo is implanted into a woman’s uterus to develop.
The majority of people seem to be comfortable with the first – but support seems to drop dramatically for actually letting cloned people be born. I definitely agree that we should not allow it while cloned organisms appear to face enormous health risks.
But if in the future cloned people faced no more health risks than a non-cloned person (ignoring for a moment how we got to that point), would it still be wrong?
For some, the opposition seems to be a belief, that we shouldn’t interfere with God’s or nature’s decisions. But if you support birth control or IVF then this argument seems less convincing by itself.
Maybe it comes from discomfort with the concept of people being allowed to make little copies of themselves. But isn’t just an extension of a desire that most people have now? Environmental factors would mean that the person isn’t a completely identical copy. Perhaps this too is about a child’s “right� to have both a mother and a father?
Perhaps, for those who don’t subscribe to intelligent design theory, it’s an evolution thing – cloning reduces the role of chance in reproduction. But most of scientific development is about reducing the role of chance in our lives, and “fighting back� against natural selection. Is cloning different, or merely an extension of this?
There could also be aesthetic or speculative reasons; a loss of diversity and the beauty that comes from difference, or a more sinister fear of a Gattaca-style future. I think this may most closely describe my feelings about it.
Why do we seem so resistant to the idea of cloning?
And more importantly, if we were to clone people, who would you want to make copies of?
No we should ban it period!
We are not God whilst we are image-bearers we do not come close.
Remember the reason to leave Eden.
Same thing here.
If you want a child go through the normal process. They are all different thank the Lord
“They are all different thank the Lord ”
With the exception of identical twins.
Are you sure Steve?
Yes. They are clones albeit natural ones.
I’d clone the 2005 Sydney Swans Football Club. Hell, everyone knows it’s going to be thirty years before we win another flag, it might as well be with the same players.
Aren’t we in a sense behaving like a pet dog. It knows how to open the door, but does it really know what it is? What a door is? What are we opening here?
Andrew Sullivan, years ago explored what the brave new world may look like- breeding clones spare parts for the wealthy.
Something about experimentation with the essence of life (stem cell res.) also makes me go a little cold at the thought.
Cloning should continued to be banned. It’s not once we get there that scares the hell out of me, it’s getting there that does.
Remember Dolly. She suddenly died of some nervous disease.
I thought he was going strong as foreign minister!
Sorry, someone had to say it!
OK, seriously now.
Homer, your argument against cloning works only if you subscribe to or are familiar with Christian religious mythology. It’s a very good argument for scientists who are Christians not to clone, but not for religious non-Christians or non-religious scientists.
I’m against reproductive cloning for the sole reason that it seems to produce human individuals without concrete identities. It’s true that identical twins are natural clones as Steve said, but they are clones of themselves, and weren’t cloned from somebody else who has a claim on them.
An issue people might like to consider is that tissue used in therapeutic cloning is taken from humans with the ability to make decisions concerning the use of their own bodies and tissue. (Property rights anyone?) Unless there’s a good universal medical ethical reason for the scientists not to use the tissue, they should be able to do whatever they like with it. I support organ donation for the same reasons—and I’ve got the details on my drivers’ licence. Should any of you come off your motorbikes at high speed, or be surprised to find that that that gun was loaded, you’re welcome to my bits.
I’m as curious as Anna to hear the medical ethical arguments against therapeutic cloning.
I would ask, “What is the point of reproductive cloning, since we’re so successful at reproducing unique individuals?”
A good point FaceLift. It’ll always be easier by unskilled labour.
Liam, it matters not what your religion is, we are all religious, reproducing clones is playing God.
I am in actual agreement with most here.interesting
“Liam, it matters not what your religion is, we are all religious, reproducing clones is playing God.”
No, we aren’t. I do not believe in any god. I have no religion. “Playing God” is a meaningless concept to me.
“What is the point of reproductive cloning, since we’re so successful at reproducing unique individuals”
The “point” of reproductive cloning is that unique individuals aren’t always what you want.
Sometimes an exact copy is what is required. This is especially the point when it comes to livestock and/or plant specimens that have genetic advantages over others.
In humans this is less necessary. In humans we tend to value individuality over genetic perfection. This doesn’t mean that this will always be the case.
If a child is born that carries a gene that proves to be extremely beneficial - say genetic immunity to HIV, then there are very strong scientific reasons to want to keep that gene in circulation. Cloning is the only sure way to guarantee this.
There may come a time where the cloning of people with certain genes would be necessary to ensure survival of the human species - it’s not too hard to imagine such a scenario. If we ban cloning we won’t have that technology available and will become extinct.
This is fine for the religious among us who believe that man’s tenancy of Earth is doomed to end soon anyway, but for those of us who’d rather see the human species continue to exist, banning cloning is a possible death sentence that could be avoided.
That’s a really interesting point, Yobbo. I haven’t heard that one before.
Liam: I’m against reproductive cloning for the sole reason that it seems to produce human individuals without concrete identities.
But does it? Surely identity comes from personality, which comes from experience and environment? They’d even look a bit different, due to different levels of activity and types of food.
I also wonder about the whole brave new world idea. If so many people are against it, then would cloned people really make up a significant proportion of society? Facelift is right - most people would still have children the natural way…
Wow, for once I agree with Yobbo.
I can’t imagine too many people will want to take up reproductive cloning. And if they do, their clones are entitled to the same legal rights as any other humans, just as identical twins are. I don’t see where there this hysteria about dehumanisation comes in at all. Being a clone does not make you any less individual - it’s only people who’ve read too much bad science fiction or watched crap movies like The Island whom one would worry about as likely to treat clones as less than human.
Yobbo
“If a child is born that carries a gene that proves to be extremely beneficial - say genetic immunity to HIV, then there are very strong scientific reasons to want to keep that gene in circulation. Cloning is the only sure way to guarantee this”.
This seems to mean you are in favor tinkering with the genetic structure to produce a good outcome. Not many of us have issue with that.
However, we are also talking about creating another Bill Gates out of his DNA from the getgo. There could be this little problem in how we get there though. No matter what our modelling suggests we won’t really know if we have been successful unless we take a fully cloned being to it full potential, which may even be old, age, to see how the clone holds up. What if it doesn’t hold up very well? In fact, what if we need to have numerous attempts before it works? In other words what if the exercise is very risky and produces mistakes? Are you willing to live with those mistakes? Don’t think so.
Do we carry separate laws in the instance of clones. In other would the killing of a clone be murder? Not sure.
Yobbo,
‘The “pointâ€? of reproductive cloning is that unique individuals aren’t always what you want.’
That’s dopey logic! Even a clone, despite the similarities in construct, will have different life experiences and responses to the original, making him or her unique as they develop. Humans produce children with characteristics of their parents already. Even twins are identifyably different in some way, but have connectable chartacteristics of their parents, grandparents, etc..
I don’t care how many Bob Dylan clones you might produce, they’ll never exactly match the present BD. His life experiences included meeting and being mentored by Woody Guthry and others. Are you going to clone them as well?
Facelift - Yobbo’s talking purely about physical characteristics - good genes that we may want to reproduce…
facelift
the arguments you produce are very good ones … for defusing the sorts of concerns expressed by Liam for instance that clones will feel left out of humanity just because they are cloned from somebody else. Don’t get me wrong, the right of Kerry Packer to clone himself isn’t a particularly rousing call to arms for me but I just don’t see any need for any legislative ‘guarantees’ banning reproductive cloning - it isn’t a looming social problem and only a few rich eccentrics will take advantage of it (and there are already more than enough other ways for people to screw up their children) and as Yobbo notes, there may be future scientific benefits from research in this area.
Homer: what Yobbo said. We’re not all religious, get over it.
Anna: It’s the source of my whole disquiet about reproductive cloning. Yes, I think that people make their identities through social construction and socialisation. I’ve got physical and non-physical scars any clone would never be able to carry. On the other hand, yes, I think I would feel a more than little bit attached to a person created through the use of my tissues, genetically identical to me.
…
OK, sad geek joke. Upon announcing the full mapping of the human genome and its peer-reviewed publication, a million teenage boys in bedrooms across the world cry out in exultation:
JS,
That covers individuality, but doesn’t answer serious questions about clone identity. When does a clone stop being an experimental object? What will be the standards used and separation points between parenting and scientific observation?
In a normal family environment these things are taken for granted, but in an experimental arena everything changes. Man becomes as god. You don’t have to be religious to know this is true.
JC is right to bring up the aspect of potential failures on the way to a complete person. This is a huge ethical question. What happens to ‘failed’ experimental human clones ‘who’ are still alive?
Not playing god? Even if you don’t believe, you will have to make decisions on a higher ethical level than man has faced before.
I don’t think it would be an experimental object any more than an IVF baby is. The “experiment” would be in creating embryos - not the person that results.
OT, is Anna’s gravatar eye her real eye, or merely an image of striking or symbolic significance?
It strikes me that biodiversity is an issue here.
Maybe I’m way off track – and I don’t fully understand the science of it all - but surely there is great value in the genetic randomness that is generated when babies are conceived in the conventional manner or IVF.
That said, I can’t see any problems with cloning stem cells.
Reproductive cloning is only useful as research towards therapeutic cloning, that is, insofar as it enables us to clone a new liver or other replacement organ (or limb, I suppose, for that matter), so really, it’s of no particular use at all. This isn’t an issue of IVF, which has practical and ethical problems of its own, and how anyone can expect a full-person clone to result in the same person as the genetic material source only shows a fairly determined insistence on some supernatural nature-over-nurture understanding of existence. Go ahead and clone. The only reason not to is because you’re afraid of soulless automatons rising up in some zombie coup.
I don’t have a problem at all with cloning, once we got the bugs sorted out.
I can’t see them being any different from ‘normal’ people. Go for it.
If i was cloned she wouldn’t be me except in looks and genetics. She wouldn’t have the same upbringing, wants, desires, scars or tattoos (or would she..spooky)
Maybe there are better arguements against it i just haven’t seen them yet.
Pleeze clone : One Colin Firth
Two Johnny Depps
Cloned Cozalcoatl would scarfe white wine instead of red. And when I had to shoot the evil clone in order to thwart its evil plan to ban Christmas, that is the only way I could tell you two apart. Remember: shoot the one drinking white wine.
you would clone Colin firth.
you’re predujiced you proud person.
would that make him the firth Colin firth to be cloned?
was there a pun or a point in there, Homer, or was it just another one of your word pictures in Dadaist?
Dadaist? what is that?
They had to burn the school down so I could pass!
Always remember Jason I am a very funny guy
cs: I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.
cozalcoatl: Excellent choices! You are a woman of exceptional taste.
Anna,
your comments need a seasonal adjustment
Considering that initially, cloning would only be available to the very rich or very powerful, it is a scary thought that we could see millions of George Bushes, John Howards, Rupert Murdochs and a very extended Walton family running around.
On the other hand, could you imagine the demand of having your very own Jessica Alba or Katherine Zeta-Jones?
Perhaps, Homer, you should spend less time on witty names for yourself, and more time coming up with new puns.
Anna,
at my age all my puns are new besides it was variation on a theme and Paganini wasn’t involved!
What happened to Christmas at Walton’s mountain on telly?
I’m sure their DNA will be the property of a corporation. Just like various seeds and plants - ala Monsanto.
Johnny Depps for all!
If a company clones me, doesn’t that DNA still belong to me? Or does it now belong to the corporation? And if I have a baby, will I be breaking copyright law by using some of THEIR DNA?
Fascinating but scary stuff.
As Catherine Zeta-Jones is Welsh, presumably her DNA would be property of an aristocrat living somewhere in Kent, or perhaps a billionaire American ex-wrestler. I don’t believe that anybody in Wales owns anything.
Perhaps, though, were she to be cloned, the Welsh soaps that used to be on SBS at four in the afternoon could get a whole lot more glamorous, bless you and keep you.
And Mark - they could remake Seinfeld to literally be all-Elaine…
The implications of genetic engineering is that the very building blocks of human life are coming under the manipulatory (real word?), commercial and regulatory power of corporations and the State. I have very mixed feelings about this… given the benefits it could have for the quality of human life. I can’t ajudicate between my feelings on this issue until I know more. All I can say is that we’re entering uncharted waters… and there will be unintended consequences (for good or ill) depending on what choice we make. The choice is morally ambiguous in my mind - we really won’t know until we go (if we want to).
With regard to genetic augmentation… my big issue is that it could result in a completely new frontier of inequality - a genetic hierarchy cut along lines of economic class. So the rich get richer (and healthier, stronger, more attractive, more invulnerable, grow gills, etc etc etc) while the poor are left behind. Maybe as it becomes cheaper and easier it’ll become more widely available… and maybe its better for the poor that the patricians serve as their guinea pigs. I don’t know. However, the implications of genetic augmentation being universally available is that we will all want the same improvements. If we can all attain to the same levels of greatness, what will mark us out from each other? I suppose environmental factors will always be a point of distinction between individuals, but still…
The movie Code 46 is interesting regarding the implications of wide use of IVF and genetic apartheid. Check it out.
This post probably betrays my ignorance of genetic science and bioethics… but then I’m sure I’ll be corrected.
On the other hand, could you imagine the demand of having your very own Jessica Alba or Katherine Zeta-Jones?
Have you seen the tv series Dark Angel, there are Jessica Alba clones in that.
Its not a bad show actually. Rebuilding the world (well Seattle anyway) after a EMP wiped everything. Genetically modified and bred soldier children kicking arse (well mostly JA in tight clothes kicking arse)